grance, and bright golden circular center, the red Gallica is remarkably fine. It may be common, but it stands the test.
     What a splendid, calm judgment, what a keen discrimination, and what independence of thought and decision have gone into this choice! You would feel that if this man made your will it would be a solid affair. The impression he made when he said, "This I like best," is as vivid as though he now stood with his fingers behind the rose. He has come again. He will come very often, I hope. His deliberate consideration has given us much food for thought about the search for perfection of bloom.
     Up the road comes a station wagon. Two dear friends and neighbors get out. One is a general gardener who works hard and well in her heavily planted and luxuriant garden. The other, a good gardener, too, has a beautiful garden laid out with box borders, scaled in fine proportion to her handsome home; a garden with an insatiable capacity for consuming plants. In it are quantities upon quantities of choice varieties of irises and roses. Of the two, she is especially the rose-lover. Our visitors go to the roses like moths to a flame. They hover about the fullest and most picturesque ones, looking for gorgeousness of bloom, comparing and grading pinks and reds and yellows for their strong color value. The fact that all of our roses are oldfashioned varieties is not to the point. Roses are roses, and that is enough. Dates add nothing to their charm and take nothing from it. History is of no consequence. To these roselovers, the color of a rose in the garden is its most powerful asset. Fragrance, yes, for a rose to cut and take into the house. Decorative value-picture value-in the garden is the test. They agree upon that, but not upon which rose has it most. Their final choices are different.
     These friends come again and again. We exchange cuttings of roses they like best for cuttings of crape-myrtles and other old roses and rhizomes of iris. When we visit our friend with the big box-bordered garden, we find cuttings in rows in the nursery, planted under two-quart glass jars in the old-fashioned Maryland manner, the square bottles clear and glistening in the sun like the bayonets of an army. So the glass will glitter through the winter; the cuttings will root; the plants will come. They will, then, be transplanted to the great garden and will
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repeat the story of the decorative value of a rose in bloom. This is something to think about during the unreckoned hours of silent gardening.
     Now, up the road comes a Ford sedan. We have been expecting it. We go out to meet four strangers. By correspondence we have arranged the date for these four rose-lovers from Virginia. One of them is a landscape architect, a graduate of the Cambridge school, an experienced, capable, quiet, and very likable person. We become friendly at once. We expand about a mutual interest. We let our visitors loose among the roses, which seem to be unusually lovely this day. They may pick anything they like. They enjoy their freedom, but pick so little that we fill. a box for them later. We follow the landscape gardener. Questions fly between us. She is an old rose-lover who has known old roses all her life and spent much of that life in old Virginia gardens. We have a discussion about our Perle des Jardins. She knows her points about this rose and about other old Tea roses. Our fondness for Tea roses is greatly gratified by this interest. She tells us how in her study of flowers she makes little water-color pictures of petals to record color shadings, an idea we seize upon. Later, letters are exchanged. A package of blooms of Perle des Jardins comes-petals fallen off, of course -but in their mass showing the peculiar color mixtures. Later, cuttings come in a bundle and, with luck, her Perle des Jardins will be added to our roses next summer.
     We are very keen to know what notes she is making. We find she is taking down much careful data about height of bush, color and abundance of foliage, growth of a normal plant, as well as notes about color of bloom and fragrance. To her, as a professional, fragrance is absolutely essential. Whence would come the romance of an old Virginia garden if not from fragrance of roses on the evening air? Especially she seems to linger over the little double Lucida rose, so dainty in form and color and scent, so clean in stem and leaf. This is the modest Rose d'Amour, much loved by Miss Jekyll; much loved by us, too. So, we make a mental note upon her refinement of taste.
     We listen with eagerness while she speaks of roses suitable for hedges. She has seen many rose hedges. She understands them and would make them of the everblooming China roses,
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